Agents of the Internet Apocalypse (3 page)

I sat on the plane, grateful for the window seat, and waited for takeoff. My companions readied their laptops and smart phones in anticipation. It would take a special kind of bastard to pride himself for not giving in to the urge to be online when only months earlier he'd been lost in years of addiction—safe, sad, and alone. But as it turns out, I was that bastard. I cracked open my
New York Times
and read about the government takeover of the hubs. Although the article didn't draw the conclusion explicitly, it seemed to me the government wasn't the culprit in the Apocalypse if removing its control from the private sector could fix the problem. But I was smart enough to know I probably didn't understand anything about the world.

My study was disturbed by the crackle of our captain over the PA, “Ladies and gentlemen, JetBlue is proud to announce that this is its first WiFi flight since the Internet Apocalypse!”

The crowd erupted into the kind of applause typically reserved for winning sports teams, and I hated myself with every fiber of my body for shaking my head with a quick laugh, like I was above such things. I forced myself to look out the window as I floated above New York and out into something undefined and blue, but really, I was counting down until the next announcement. Then it came:

“Ladies and gentlemen, JetBlue now welcomes you to use your approved electronic devices.”

The laptops and phones came out from under the seats and pockets with ordered cacophony like kids taking out books from grade school desks. I watched the man next to me, a forty-something with glasses so nice you'd mistake him for a visiting European, pay his WiFi fee and get on Google. He searched “puppies” as a test run. It worked. Then, on to his Gmail. No new messages. I raised the op-ed page to obscure my spying, and he sent a test e-mail to himself, labeling it “test.” (He had limited creativity.) It went through, and he made a face like a suburban dad, proud of the sauce he'd just sampled off his backyard BBQ ribs. I needed more than a newspaper to distract me from the Internet so I ordered a movie. Some high-concept comedy to hide my need.

But when the film was over, I let myself look at his laptop again. It had 25% battery life.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Any chance I could use your laptop to check my e-mail? I promise I'll be off in literally two minutes.”

He adjusted his glasses, running his thumb and forefinger along the arm almost all the way to his ear.

“You can watch me,” I said as he considered the request. “I don't care. I just want to check.”

“Just a couple of minutes,” he said. “I have to do some more things before the battery dies.”

I accepted this as true even though I'd already watched him refresh his Facebook three times. He turned the laptop to face me, keeping it on his fold down table. I leaned forward to sign in to my Gmail account, and he kept watch, not even pretending to hide his view of my password. I'm not sure what I was hoping to find, but I had no new messages. The last e-mails from Tobey were long since read. That's when I realized I didn't have his address. His IM light wasn't lit. No one's was. I searched my mail, looking for one with his address, and found it within twenty seconds. With that kind of efficiency, sometimes it seemed letting Google take over the world wouldn't be a bad thing. They certainly work better than the government or I.

“Almost done,” I said. “Thank you.”

I was done, but I wanted more playtime, and I clicked my spam folder. In it were all the typical things from Nigerian princes and black market Viagra salesmen, but there was more. There were e-mails from Romaya. E-mails from after the divorce. And they were from a normal account, which meant that if they ended up in spam it was because I'd had them automatically forwarded there to be ignored. Google helped me pretend my wife was dead instead of living without me. Apparently, there was an app for that.

I felt a tightness in my chest and it didn't come from my neighbor's oversight of my activities; it was the blackness of her unread messages waiting for me. The panic was back. I clicked the most recent e-mail. It was from several months before the Apocalypse. It was as bad as I feared. Even my neighbor, who saw everything, tried to spare me the indignity by taking off his glasses and looking away: “I understand you don't want to see me, but do me a favor and don't leave obnoxious comments on my Instagram pics. Thanks.”

I signed out and thanked him, turning the laptop back in his direction.

“My ex-wife,” I said, hoping that was somehow less incriminating than whatever he'd imagined.

The sky over the middle of America was just like the sky in New York and I knew it would be the same in the West. It didn't matter how quickly I traveled through it, I was reachable in a way I hadn't been in the subways. No longer safe. I closed the window shade and worked the
Times
crossword puzzle until we landed, another hour or so later. I couldn't finish it, and that felt like a bad omen for my new life. I carried those feelings with me out into LAX, looking for a sign, and short of that, a bar. I found both.

Right there in the airport, in big bold letters, was Gladstone's LAX—a seafood restaurant and bar. My journey had been preordained even if my appearance spoke equal parts doctor and mental patient. I decided I didn't want L.A. to think of me as either, so I turned my back on Gladstone's and even the alcohol inside because I needed clothes. I had some options in an airport as large as LAX, but I walked into the first store I saw.

First, I got some sandals. That seemed an obvious enough choice. My DMs weren't right for California and the sandals went just fine with the scrubs. Even made them look almost deliberately casual. I was pleased. I'd gotten really used to the comfort of scrubs and the thought of going back to real clothes wasn't particularly pleasant. I wondered if there were some other article of clothing I could get to dress them up—somehow make them more legit. That's when I saw a light, white cotton blazer, not unlike Don Johnson's old
Miami Vice
jacket. I slipped it on and it almost worked. I was getting there. The remnants of my illness mixed with L.A. airport fashion to create something new. Wasn't the way this ensemble was coming together a sign as sure as “Gladstone's”?

If I had any doubt, it soon lifted when I saw a white fedora for sale. Lighter than the somewhat traumatized fabric one I had in my hand and the perfect complement to the jacket. I walked to the store's one full-length mirror, wanting to bear witness to my own coronation as I applied the fedora. I was in white, and I felt new and clean. I took the love letter from my journal and tucked it safely into my breast pocket.

Now it was time to find Tobey. He lived in Santa Monica on Lincoln Boulevard. I thought about renting a car with GPS, but I wasn't sure GPS would be working now. I didn't want to chance it, and even with it, I didn't want to drive. At this hour, with this traffic, taking a cab seemed like a perfectly acceptable way of asking for help.

This place clearly wasn't New York, and not just because my cabbie was Mexican, but because he was spiritually reconciled with being in traffic. That was just the deal here. But there was a bigger difference: there was no city. The 405 didn't lead to some majestic skyline that awakened possibility. It was no road to the Emerald City. It just sprawled out ahead, with only its traffic and functionality to keep it company. And as I watched the nothing go by, I thought about a story I once heard Madonna tell about when she was a fame-hungry little girl from Michigan. The day she got to New York, she asked her cabbie to take her to the middle of everything. He drove her to Times Square, and she got out amid the lights and noise and people. But that's not really a request you can make in Los Angeles. You'd need to give the driver more information, and even if you knew the location, once you got there, you'd have to be invited in. If Times Square bustles with the energy and excitement of a crowded chat room or lively comment thread, L.A. highways are the infrastructure of the Net itself: discrete passages to unremarkable locations, carrying anonymous packets of cargo.

The ride took forty-five minutes, and there was enough light left when I got there to make sure I was in the right place. I caught the complex door from a twenty-something lady walking her dog out of the building, and made my way to Tobey's apartment. It was then I realized I probably should have dropped Tobey a heads up e-mail when I was on the plane, but we'd almost never e-mailed. Ours was an IM relationship and he wasn't online when I'd checked. I needlessly consulted the address I'd scribbled on my scrap of the
New York Times
again before approaching number 19. The black plastic doorbell just below his peephole did a pretty good job of producing the sonic equivalent of a mechanical queef so I wasn't surprised when there was no answer. I knocked. Then again, but louder.

After the third knock, a voice barked out, “Come back later. Masturbating!”

The voice was definitely Tobey's.

“Jerk off on your own time,” I called. “You have company.”

“Who is it?” he asked, like there was a right and wrong answer to the question.

“Wayne.”

“Gladstone?!”

“Yes!”

There was a pause, and then, “Come back later. Masturbating.”

I heard a rustle behind the door before I could respond, and Tobey greeted me seconds later, extending his right hand for a shake.

“That's okay, tiger,” I said pulling back. “I don't think you had time to wash up.”

“Huh? Oh. Don't be stupid, I was joking.” He grabbed my hand, shaking it vigorously and pulling me in for a hug. “Come in!”

Tobey's apartment was a lot like I'd remembered it from that one prior visit. A small perfunctory bedroom down the hall with an even smaller bathroom next to it. The main space was a living/dining room adjacent to a kitchen that was seemingly installed only to comply with a technicality in the lease. The focal point was Tobey's abused fabric couch. In front of it was a tiny glass coffee table with a laptop. A flat-screen TV hung on the opposing wall.

“Enjoy,” Tobey said, placing his hand on my shoulder and gesturing to the greatness of the accommodations. “I'm having a pool put in next week.”

“You're on the third floor.”

“Yeah, not a big one, but deeeep.”

I sat on Tobey's couch. Even my backpack was heavy enough to sink deep into its cushion. His Internet was indeed working. Also, porn was up on the screen.

“I thought you said you were joking?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tobey said. “The Net's back. I hadn't jerked off to Internet porn in four months!”

I looked down at my hand.

“Don't worry. I didn't finish.”

I gingerly refreshed the page just to test the connection.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“Three gallons of Purell?” I replied.

The page refreshed and new girls filled the video players along the side, getting sodomized in silence. And then they froze. I refreshed again and that circle just kept turning.

“Uh, Tobes?”

“What the fuck did you do?!”

“Nothing. You saw me. I just hit refresh. Maybe they're still working the kinks out?”

“Can't believe you broke my porn,” Tobey said, heading to the kitchen and grabbing us a couple of beers.

“Give it a minute,” I said and accepted a can of PBR, my first drink in two months. Dr. Kreigsman noted that I'd used alcohol as a depressant, a bad way to deal with panic, but he never claimed addiction.

“So what brings you to L.A., Gladballs?”

There was a silence more awkward than the penetration I'd just witnessed, and we looked at each other. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “That sounded weird out loud.”

“Yeah, save clever nicknames for IMs and texts, Tobes.”

“Yarp.”

“Anyway, um, this is gonna sound a little weird,” I said. “But I've spent the last two months institutionalized.”

Tobey could not have been less thrown.

“Did you try to kill yourself or something?”

“No, but they thought so.” He just waited for more. If this were an online conversation, he would have typed “.…”

“Well, I jumped off the Staten Island Ferry,” I said.

“But
not
to kill yourself?”

“No, I was looking for the Internet.”

I was aware none of this would make sense and I was too tired to figure out the most palatable chronological order.

“Y'know, I don't think I have the strength to go through it all again,” I said. “But I did write it down. Some things are too difficult to say out loud.”

“Like ‘Gladballs'?”

“Exactly.”

I handed Tobey my journal and he held it with more reverence than I was expecting.

“So that should explain it all, if you want to check it out while you're waiting for your porn to come back,” I said.

“Answers everything, huh?”

“I think so.”

Tobey looked me up and down and then back at the journal.

“One question,” he asked. “Will it explain why you're dressed like an Argentinian child-prostitute pimp?”

*   *   *

Tobey thought it was weird to go off and read my journal in his bedroom while I sat in his apartment alone, but I insisted. It would be better to tell it all in one go, even if it meant waiting. Like taking the time for the full download instead of trying to stream and deal with the buffering. I sipped at the PBR, occasionally hitting refresh on Tobey's laptop, but mostly I just sat. It was good to sit in the world with a real person. This was a safe place. So safe I even fell asleep.

“Is the Internet back?” Tobey asked a few hours later.

I clicked refresh. “Sorry, Tobes,” I said, still waking up. “No porn yet.”

“Ah, that's okay. I don't need it anymore.” He held up my book.